Site Mobile Navigation

In Ryan Speech, Don’t Expect Palin Sequel

Representative Paul D. Ryan, center, worked on the speech he will deliver Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention with Dan Senor, left, a Romney adviser, and Conor Sweeney during their flight to Tampa, Fla.Credit
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. — Standing at a lectern and flanked by teleprompters in Salon B of a Holiday Inn Express in Janesville, Wis., Representative Paul D. Ryan on Monday afternoon rehearsed the most important speech of his life — the one accepting the Republican vice-presidential nomination.

It was the last act in an elaborate production that began unfolding behind the scenes on Aug. 11, when Mitt Romney announced Mr. Ryan as his running mate, and will culminate with Mr. Ryan’s prime-time address to an audience of millions on Wednesday night. Mr. Ryan began the process two weeks ago, entering ideas for his speech on a legal pad or his iPad. In recent days, in lengthy sessions with advisers, he reviewed single-spaced drafts of the speech. No one could leave the hotel room or disembark from his MD-83 jet until an aide had typed any changes into a MacBook Pro and all paper copies were shredded or ripped up.

The campaign declined to discuss the speech’s content, but members of Mr. Ryan’s inner circle shared details of the drafting process, which has been the candidate’s chief focus since late last week.

“Words matter a lot, and I’m putting a lot of effort into it,” Mr. Ryan said when asked recently on his plane how the speech was going.

“You know me,” he told reporters. “I want to make sure I give a good speech, and I want to make sure it’s well done.”

One of Mr. Ryan’s writers, Matthew Scully, wrote the 2008 convention speech by a relatively unknown vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who electrified Republicans with her dismissal of Senator Barack Obama as a community organizer without “actual responsibilities,” and sent a “news flash” to reporters and commentators that she was not about “to seek their good opinion.”

But the Ryan campaign is tamping down expectations for a Palin-style sequel, and not just because there is the threat that he will have to share the screen with Hurricane Isaac as it wreaks damage on the Gulf Coast.

The campaign notes that Mr. Ryan is better known at this point than Ms. Palin was and a different kind of candidate besides, more comfortable talking about policy.

“It’s a whole different context,” said a senior campaign adviser who was not authorized to talk about the speech. “Ryan is his own guy. He brings something to the ticket and the things he brings to the ticket, he’s going to talk about.”

Unlike many past vice-presidential convention addresses, when speechwriters parachute in a few days before deadline, Mr. Scully and his writing partner, John McConnell, were told to travel with Mr. Ryan on the campaign trail. Their assignment was to soak up his speaking style on the stump, hear his thoughts about what he wanted to say, get to know him.

“We would sit at the front of the plane and kick around ideas with Paul,” the adviser said. “They would sort of interview him about his life.”

The speech will have three components, according to the campaign: Mr. Ryan will describe his life story, he will deconstruct the record and agenda of the Obama administration, and he will sing the praises of Mr. Romney.

It is the first part, his personal story, that Mr. Ryan has spoken about the least on the campaign trail. “Expect a lot of Janesville in it,” the adviser said, referring to Mr. Ryan’s hometown.

At a send-off rally Monday in Janesville, Mr. Ryan seemed to offer a preview, portraying himself as the regular guy the campaign is hoping appeals to working-class voters: a fifth-generation descendant of Irish immigrants who “made a go of it,” a hunter whose “tree stand is over about six miles in that direction,” and a friend to men who lost jobs when an auto plant closed and have sought new careers at a local technical college.

A week ago, Mr. Scully and Mr. McConnell peeled off after Mr. Ryan delivered a speech on Medicare in Florida. They have been holed up in a Tampa-area hotel since.

Last week they sent the first draft to Mr. Ryan, and he led discussions of it and of further drafts with three Congressional staff members — his chiefs of staff from Wisconsin and Washington and his spokesman — along with Dan Senor, a Romney adviser dispatched by the campaign’s headquarters in Boston to manage the process.

Drafts were also sent to Mr. Romney’s top advisers, including Ed Gillespie, a senior strategist, and Beth Myers, who led the vice-presidential search.

On Saturday a near-final draft was finished. When Mr. Ryan returned home to Janesville on Sunday, it was fed into the teleprompters at the Holiday Inn for the first rehearsal. The session was supposed to go until 6 p.m., but Mr. Ryan, who is adamant about making it home for dinner with his family on Sundays, wrapped up at 5:30.

Is he nervous about giving a speech that could make or break his reputation?

“If he’s nervous, he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it,” the adviser said. “We purposely don’t spend much time reminding him of how important it is.”

Correction: August 28, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated when Paul D. Ryan said, “Words matter a lot.” It was in the last few days on his plane, not Tuesday on his way to Tampa, Fla.

A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2012, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Two Shadows Hover Over Ryan’s Speech: Palin of 2008, and Isaac in 2012. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe